#MORMON CRICKET WINDOWS#

In 2003, some counties in Idaho and Nevada were forced to declare states of emergency because of cricket-caused damage.Д®stimates of crop damage in Utah reached more than $25 million in 2001.ДЇemale crickets can lay up to 100 eggs each summer, which hatch the following spring Out-of-control swarms can mean big economic losses for states.

#MORMON CRICKET WINDOWS#

Residents in the north-central Oregon town of Arlington started dealing with Mormon crickets in June, scrambling to protect gardens and farm crops and trying to keep the bugs from invading homes through open windows and doors. The federal agency says the bugs- actually katydids, an entomological cousin to grasshoppers - are stretched in a band across southwestern Idaho, concentrated around Winnemucca, Nevada and sprinkled throughout Oregon, Washington, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona and Colorado. The bugs can start to be detrimental to rangeland and crops when they number about 8 per square yard, state officials said. In Idaho, in a few locations, we have seen populations as high as 70 per square yard.' The outbreak of Mormon crickets in 1938 destroyed 19 million acres in 11 different states.'There isn't a clear explanation why populations are so much higher this year,' Powell wrote. Outbreaks building to threatening numbers of Mormon crickets only occur every few years. When they are squashed, the live Mormon crickets pause to feast on the squashed carcasses of their peers, causing roadways to become slick with their body parts and fluids. In drought years, they can even remove the wood siding from houses. Something triggers within the insects to swarm and they all begin roaming in one direction, like a flock of birds, devouring and destroying everything within their path. When smaller bands of Mormon crickets join other populations of crickets, they can reach densities of 100 per square yard. A female Mormon cricket can lay up to 80 eggs before she dies. They hatch in the spring, reach maturity by late summer, and then mate, lay eggs, and then die. During those stages, their lifecycle lasts about three months, or from 60 to 90 days. Mormon crickets undergo seven stages of development from the time they hatch, until the time they die. Their main source of food is barley, wheat, clover, and alfalfa, but they have been known to devour entire vegetable gardens and any other natural plant within their swarming path. In large swarms, the can utterly destroy and damage plants and cultivated crops in their path. When they swam, Mormon crickets voraciously consume anything within their path, including other Mormon crickets in front of them. Mormon crickets are not nocturnal insects, traveling and eating mainly during the day. They travel mostly by crawling and hopping, and can migrate a half-a-mile each day, and cover 25 to 50 miles in one season. And while they are winged insects, they cannot fly.

Most Mormon crickets are brown, but there are black and green varieties. A Mormon cricket is quite large, growing to 2 inches in length, with the females generally being larger than the males.

Their habitat begins in southern Canada and ranges southward, with populations of Mormon crickets thriving in New Mexico, Nevada, California, and Arizona. It is a shield-backed katydid, found in western North America. Yet, the Mormon cricket really isn't a cricket, at all. Thus, the insect was dubbed the Mormon cricket. The California gulls consumed the crickets, were seen to vomit the eaten insects, and return time and again to eat more until the cricket population was destroyed.

In an answer to their fervent prayers, the Mormons were saved from famine when seagulls arrived, eating the hordes of crickets over several days. That first Mormon settlement lost the majority of their wheat harvest when the crickets devoured the crops, destroying all vegetation, and other crickets, in their path. In 1848, according to Utah's state history, crickets destroyed the crops of Mormon pioneers.